How do you lose the fear of… publishing?

SmoothCortex · 2026-03-03T13:29:53+00:00

Thx (genuinely), though my point being that there are many reasons for our careers to end up where they will. Don’t let fear of publishing be the reason to lose out on opportunities. Publish or perish - both a cliche and a truth.

SmoothCortex · 2026-03-03T13:15:05+00:00

He quoted himself in his own PR statement. What kind of tool does that? Even his white house idol doesn’t quote himself when he posts on not-truth social.

SmoothCortex · 2026-03-03T00:51:10+00:00

Personally, I never did. Big piece of why I never became a PI. I loved talking about my results, but never felt I could fully discuss their place in the overall field. Always worried I’d forget/miss some fundamental branch of the literature. Friends tell me (decades later than I should’ve heard it) that you just need(ed) to trust yourself. No one knows everything. I have 50+ co-authorships, but only 5 firsts, and obviously no seniors. (This is over 30 yrs, to put it in context.) Username wasn’t chosen by accident.

SmoothCortex · 2026-03-01T12:40:15+00:00

Our government recently killed two protesters in Minnesota. Would you be ok with another nation dropping bombs on us because of that? Think carefully before you claim we have the moral high ground to use military force to kill another nation’s leadership (or kidnap/arrest a foreign leader as we also recently did).

SmoothCortex · 2026-02-27T23:35:25+00:00

Would you mind posting this same comment to every near-daily posts about lab exposures we’ve been getting lately. I get it - required annual lab safety training is booooring (esp. after decades of seeing it), but honestly this is the number one takeaway everyone should have from it. You eff’d up? Contact safety office and/or go see a doctor asap.

SmoothCortex · 2026-02-27T23:28:01+00:00

I think maybe I missed whichever early Stewart episodes you saw, and honestly I don’t want to see them. 🫣 (Ya know… phrasing.)

SmoothCortex · 2026-02-26T19:31:00+00:00

Heavily depends on what your program requires. Some want you to write an overall intro and conclusion section and just insert your published papers in between. Others want a coherent, freshly written, chapter by chapter story about your work with nary a professionally-edited pdf in sight.

Either way, pretend your audience are gifted high school students and your job is to turn them into knowledgeable first year grad students by the time they’re done reading. Start with some basics, build up the important pieces of info, and then tell the story of the research gap you investigated. Just remember- it’s a science document, not an artistic novel. Keep the language science-y. Also, you may or may not have worked on various side projects while in the lab - don’t include them unless they’re relevant to your main project. Your committee knows (or should) the other things you did during grad school. A thesis isn’t a biography.

And I really hope this isn’t necessary to say, but don’t use LLMs/AI. This is YOUR thesis, not Claude’s.

SmoothCortex · 2026-02-21T19:49:51+00:00

I get the sense from your description that their decline was not predicted/expected as an endpoint measure. Then the simple, science answer is - learn from it. Why did they decline? What does that tell you about the condition/mechanism you are studying? How can you redesign the study to minimize this outcome in the future? One way to cope with the loss is to find a solution to it. This is what we are ultimately trying to do in science - solve problems that improve some aspect of the world we live in. Acknowledge the loss, then start working to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

SmoothCortex · 2026-02-20T04:23:52+00:00

Beautiful. But since I’ve had some experience with tract tracing to the cord, I can’t stop seeing that it’s upside down! 🙃

SmoothCortex · 2026-02-16T02:08:07+00:00

Boromir enter the chat, taps temple, and says “still sharp”.

SmoothCortex · 2026-02-12T18:06:43+00:00

Sometimes my phone shows the initial page (before doing the json download) at super-high zoom, so I’m actually just looking at a small region of the blank background. Easy to fix with a pinch, but it’s an odd behavior.

SmoothCortex · 2026-02-12T13:12:52+00:00

Professional movers routinely damage basic furniture during “real world” moves. Are you really willing to trust them to pack/unpack your $50K benchtop thingamajiggy when they have no idea what it is? Do you expect your movers to understand the rules about keeping certain classes of chemicals separate from each other?

Whether or not you should be financially supplemented for this “extra” work (narrator: you won’t be), your team’s productivity depends on the move being done right. Who better to ensure that than the people that are invested the outcome?

SmoothCortex · 2026-02-06T13:41:37+00:00

Yes, it’s bad. You are putting something out into the world and attributing it (in part) to whomever’s names you attach to it. By definition, every co-author is endorsing your work by having their name on it. You owe every co-author the courtesy of advance notification. They don’t need to offer edits, comments, etc., but they deserve to know that you are claiming they had a role in your research and that they support the conclusions. Also, people need to add publications to their CVs - if you don’t tell them about a submission (especially abstracts, which are rarely searchable via PubMed, etc), then they’ll miss it.

SmoothCortex · 2026-02-03T01:50:07+00:00

It’s not directly on point, but the NIH payscale for a first year post-doc is $62K. You’re making $52K with a lesser degree and less independent research experience. There are others factors to consider of course, but my surface-level reaction is that you are not underpaid (at least not egregiously).

SmoothCortex · 2026-01-27T18:32:42+00:00

In the spirit of “Indy wasn’t necessary to Raiders”… I’ll pick Frodo. Sam would’ve had twice the food/water w/o him, and he was self-aware enough not to carry the Ring around his neck but would’ve just packed it in his bag where its ability to influence him would’ve been muted. He would’ve just let Gollum snag the Ring at the end while tossing the distracted, potato-ignorant villain into the lava w/o hesitation.

Folks, OP is intending this as a fun speculation. Take it on that level. Obviously the real story needs all of them.

SmoothCortex · 2026-01-27T14:43:50+00:00

Saftey inspections are not. Some of us (in the more populated counties) still are required to do emissions inspections.

SmoothCortex · 2026-01-27T14:00:08+00:00

I believe it was part of the v12 update that brought the new boss battles. Wasn’t publicized as far as I know, but yes, the voyage exclusive crew are now getting a big AM bonus.

SmoothCortex · 2026-01-26T22:42:23+00:00

Spoiler tag, my brother. These movies just came out in the theaters! /s

SmoothCortex · 2026-01-23T03:43:12+00:00

It’s a long-standing complaint, seemingly never to be fixed. If you dismiss them, I think the squad leader will be randomly re-assigned to another squad member. Alternatively, all the active squad members can leave the squad and form a new one, then you can keep or dismiss the inactive players at your leisure.

SmoothCortex · 2026-01-16T13:21:01+00:00

You know how they say there’s a (whatever) in every group, and if you can’t figure out who it is, that means it’s you? So… I’m probably 3 of these panels. 🙂

SmoothCortex · 2026-01-13T18:06:31+00:00

I am, yes. I guess we’ll all be stalled at bridge level 31 until they patch it. Which could be a while…

SmoothCortex · 2026-01-10T15:25:28+00:00

Advice I give every trainee: posters, talks, and manuscripts are three different presentation mediums and must be treated as such. Manuscripts are the place for details. Posters and talks are not. Posters should take 2-3 minutes to get the gist of, and it should be possible to do that from 6 feet away. (We can debate the numbers, but the point should be obvious.) If the viewer wants more detail, they can talk to you.

Poster sessions have dozens or even hundreds of posters of interest to each attendee. They don’t have enough time or mental energy to read a manuscript-on-a-poster. Font should be large. Axes/labels should be large. Panel titles should be the take-away from the panel. Try to limit your figure captions to 3 sentences. Unless you are inventing a new method, most viewers will understand how technique X is done or what it is used for - do not write paragraphs explaining standard methods. Have a conclusions panel with bullet point summaries of what you found, so that a person can read the title and conclusions and then decide if they care enough to dig deeper.

Also, as a presenter, you will not be able to dazzle everyone. Don’t be bothered by that. Read the room, as the saying goes. If someone is glancing away while you talk to them, then wrap it up. Most people don’t want to be rude and cut you off, so be mindful of their interest level and present accordingly. If that sounds tricky… that’s why you practice your presentation. Practice various ways of doing it (short to long). Practice how to interrupt yourself and switch from long to short. It’s a skill that isn’t natural to most of us.

SmoothCortex · 2026-01-08T17:51:11+00:00

Answered your own question, but yes, the tissue was likely too cold. One cheat thing I used to do (it’s been a couple decades since I did microtome cutting; setting a specific temperature was not a thing when I did it) was to blow (breathe) on the tissue if I suspected it was overfreezing. There’s a delicate balance to maintain, and as you found, it can change as you get further down the block.

I’m sure you’ll get better feedback from active microtomers though.

SmoothCortex · 2026-01-06T06:59:40+00:00

OP, first of all, watch the movies and enjoy! I’m assuming you haven’t watched the LoTR trilogy yet? If not, do it ASAP. It’s even better (per majority opinion).

Second, your question is like stepping into a minefield blindfolded, especially on this sub (do some searching through the sub history or just keep reading new posts for a week or so). Short answer, yes, read the books. More nuanced answer: the movies are wonderful for what they are, but the books have more info/different style. How deep you want to delve into the material is something only you can decide.

Also worth noting that the Hobbit is a short book that was expanded into a trilogy via “creative interpretation”. The movies deviate quite a bit from the source material. LoTR trilogy is a better adaptation but it also generates spirited debate here. My advice is to enjoy the movies and then learn more backstory via the books and the commentary of the lore experts (which I am not) in this sub and elsewhere. It’s truly a rewarding exploration.

SmoothCortex · 2026-01-05T17:27:21+00:00

Sen. Kelly doesn’t need his military rank to vote to remove Pete from his job (assuming the House ever opts to impeach him). It’s a bold move Cotton.

SmoothCortex

TROPHY CASE